Mingan River


Mingan River is a salmon river of the Côte-Nord region of Quebec. It flows from north to south and empties into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.

Location

The Mingan River's source is in the Canadian Shield.
It descends to sea level from an elevation of at its source, and is long.
For most of its length it runs through a rocky valley lined with fir and spruce.
Towards the end it flows between banks of sand and marble.
The course of the river from its source is fairly straight, apart from two large meanders before it enters its large estuary.
There are monumental falls about from its mouth, and other rapids further north.
The river is navigable from its mouth to the rapids.
When the river's flow is low, salt waters from the Gulf can reach over from the mouth.
The river enters the Saint Lawrence opposite the Île du Havre de Mingan.
This island is at the west end of the Mingan Archipelago.
The river's mouth is just east of the Mingan Indian reserve.
It is in the municipality of Havre-Saint-Pierre in the Minganie Regional County Municipality.
It is east of the village of Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan.
A footpath runs up the river's east bank from the Quebec Route 138 bridge for to a relaxation and picnic area.

Name

The local Innu people call the river Ekuantshiht Hipu or Memekuauhekau Hipu.
The name Mingan is thought to be of Breton origin, meaning "white stone".
The bay at its mouth was called the Grande Rade de Meigan in 1735 by the hydrographer Richard Testu de La Richardière.
The navigator James Cook called it the Baye de Mingan in 1784.
The river is identified on the 1775 map by John Mitchell.

Description

According to the Dictionnaire des rivières et lacs de la province de Québec,

Basin

The basin covers.
It is elongated along a NNE/SSW axis about long and wide, although the northernmost is only wide.
It is bordered to the west by the basin of the Saint-Jean River and on the east by the basin of the Romaine River.
The river basin is in the Minganie Regional County Municipality.
It is partly in the unorganized territory of Lac-Jérôme and partly in the municipalities of Havre-Saint-Pierre and Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan. A small part of the basin is in the Mingan reserve.

Terrain

The bulk of the watershed is on a high plateau that is slightly inclined towards the south and is deeply incised by alluvial valleys.
The highest point is above sea level.
The sides of the river valleys can rise above the river and include escarpments more than high.
The piedmont area between the inland plateau and the coastal plain is about wide.
It contains rounded rocky hills,and rises to of elevation.
The coastal plain is wide and is relatively flat, with some low hills no more than high.
The bedrock is mainly magmatic, including an anorthositic massif and a smaller area of granitoid rocks.
The bedrock on the plateau and piedmont is covered by discontinuous areas of glacial till no more than deep.
The bedrock often shows in outcrops on the slopes and hilltops.
The main valleys hold glaciofluvial sediments and some eskers.
The coastal plain has large amounts of clay and silt deposited by the Goldthwait Sea after the glaciers retreated.
These fine sediments were then covered by coarser sandy deltaic and estuarine sediments.

Hydrology

The valleys of the streams and rivers conform to fractures in the hard bedrock, with straight-line sections intersecting at right angles.
In the plateau the rivers mostly flow in straight courses through old V-shaped valleys formed in the last glacial period.
The larger rivers in the center flow in more winding courses through U-shaped glacial valleys, and in places meander.
In its last section the Mingan River again follows a rectilinear course cut through the loose coastal sediments, then makes two large meanders before entering the Saint Lawrence.
The river has an estuary long with an average width of.
The estuary is a submerged delta with multiple channels and shoals fed by erosion from the banks of the downstream part of the river.
The annual average flow at the river mouth is estimated to be, varying during the year from.
When flow is low the salt waters can travel up the estuary to the Quebec Route 138 bridge.
The Mingan is fed in the north by the Mingan Northwest and Mingan Northeast rivers.
Tributaries include the Mitshem Kutshieu River, which drains the center-west of the basin, and the Manitou River, which drains the southwest of the basin and joins the Mingan about from its mouth.
A tributary that enters the east bank drains lakes Charles, Jérôme and Kleczkowski.
Waterfalls on the Mingan river include the Nakatshuan Mantu Hipis, Kakahtshekaut, Kastjekawt and Mingan Falls.
The Mingan Falls are from the river's mouth.
Water quality measurements in 1981-1985 at the Route 138 bridge showed the water was acidic but quality was satisfactory, the main problem being turbidity.
The connected lakes André and Charles in the north of the basin cover, Lake Kleczkowski in the northwest covers, Lake Cugnet in the center-south covers, the connected lakes Manitou, Gros Diable and Petit Diable in the south cover and Lake Patterson in the south covers.
Water bodies cover 8.73% of the watershed in total.
Wetlands cover 1.81% of the wateshed and are mainly ombrotrophic peatlands in the coastal plain.
There are few wetlands in plateau or piedmont, which have few flat areas suitable for their formation.
However, there is a peat bog about north of the confluence of the Mingan Northwest River.

Environment

The Rivière-Saint-Jean weather station, from the mouth of the river, reports an annual average temperature of and annual average rainfall of.
A map of the ecological regions of Quebec shows the river in sub-regions 6j-T and 6m-T of the east spruce/moss subdomain.
Forests are dominated by black spruce and balsam fir, with a greater ratio of spruce to fir further north.
Other tree species include white spruce, jack pine, paper birch and trembling aspen.
The forest is generally mature and virgin, with few fires and little forestry in recent decades, but there was a large infestation of hemlock looper moths in the late 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s that caused considerable defoliation of the fir trees in the center of the basin.
There are three waterfowl conservation areas with IUCN category VI along the south of the watershed: the Mingan West Beach, Mingan River Beach and Île du Havre de Mingan.

Fish

Innu have long used the territory for hunting and fishing, and Europeans have been fishing for salmon since the start of the 19th century.
The Pourvoirie du Lac Allard et Rivière Mingan, which does not have exclusive rights, manages fishing on part of the river.
The river is known for Atlantic salmon, and also has rainbow smelt, brook trout, Atlantic sturgeon, northern pike, lake whitefish and brown trout.
Other species include round whitefish, lake trout, burbot, alewife, American shad, Atlantic tomcod and American eel.
The number of salmon caught in the river declined during the early 2000s, indicating a declining population.
In November 2015 it was reported that the North Shore Atlantic Salmon Habitat Enhancement Program was contributing CDN$565,000 to the Ekuanitshit Innu Council and the Manitou-Mingan Outfitters for work to give the salmon easier access to spawning sites upstream from the falls, which the salmon struggle to mount.
The first phase had been started, and included a series of 14 connected basins as well as a flow control channel.
After completion the river above the first falls would provide 84% of the salmon potential in the river basin along of the river.